


Kimi no Tameni

by felispirit



Category: Hakuouki
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff, Hakuouki - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Revolution, Souji Being Souji (Hakuouki), War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 14:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16855717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felispirit/pseuds/felispirit
Summary: 君のために | ғᴏʀ ʏᴏᴜ ⠀ᴡʜᴇɴ ʏᴏᴜ sᴀɪᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ʟɪᴠᴇ ғᴏʀ ᴍᴇ, ɪᴛ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʟɪᴠᴇ ᴛᴏᴏ.ᴇᴠᴇɴ ᴡʜᴇɴ ᴡᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀᴘᴀʀᴛ, ᴍʏ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs ʙᴇʟᴏɴɢ ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜ.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ɪ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ғʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏᴛᴛᴏᴍ ᴏғ ᴍʏ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛ.ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴇᴠᴇʀ ғᴏʀɢᴇᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ʜᴀᴘᴘʏ.『愛してるよ』⠀ɪ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜ.





	Kimi no Tameni

⠀⠀⠀The scintillescent incandescence of chiliadal lanterns enlightened the frosty city of nightfall with mellow, flaxen fluorescence, the infinitesimal flames of countless candles oscillating heartily within lucid glass as they flitted felicitously across myriads of moonlight and shadow. Despite the recent conflict only a fortnight prior, the city had recovered well enough. The usual algid placidity was well gone, replaced with fleeting jubilance and merriment. The streets were bright as day, brimming with the delectable scent of cinnamon and sugar and lighthearted mirth.

⠀⠀⠀But the jocund cachinnation of the people that passed him faded into the distance, deliquesced into the hazy, jovial radiance of the holiday. His boots sounded mutely against the cobblestone pathway, coppery hair turned aureate in the rapturous luminescence of Christmas Eve. The sword at his side clinked in time with his steps, too uncouthly for his little frame, but he didn't notice. The only presence that mattered was the statuesque, broad-shouldered silhouette already further ahead on the path he followed, an eminent light in the deleterious caliginosity of warfare. He had the virtue of nobility, and yet never arrogance; he was effulgent, emanating warmth, resolution, and audacity all at once. An interminable aspiration, a reason to go on regardless of what he had lost.

⠀⠀⠀The aforementioned man stopped in place and turned inquisitively, amber irises set aflame by the lucent coruscation of candlelight. They settled on the boy, standing quietly amidst the frolicsome radiance, his milky pale visage waxen and roseate with cold. Despite the austere black military attire, he was angelic, virile features bearing semblance to a marble sculpture. The heartening glow of the city flecked his emerald eyes with gold, bedimmed in the obscurity of his long lashes.

⠀⠀⠀"What is it, Souji?" The young captain asked, a hint of worry overt in his voice.

⠀⠀⠀Souji reached out a slender white hand to catch the feathery cold that descended from the dreary December sky, emerald eyes disquisitive. "It's snowing," he murmured softly.

⠀⠀⠀"That is because we are further north. Do you know why snow is like rebirth, Souji?" He gazed fondly at the resplendent city, tilting his head to the sky in complacent reticence. The imperceptible envoys of winter had collated atop the intricate lampposts, amassing over the ice that coated the streets and glistening upon the glabriety of the brambles. In the wintry winds, the ashen flecks cavorted and fell and materialized into vapor, nimble and yet apathetic as they adorned the city in lactescent, achromatic frost. "Tomorrow, it will cover the world in bloodless white, like a new inception." The snowflakes that had settled on his clothes vanished into nothing, a spark of fire extinguished in imperturbable cold.

⠀⠀⠀"It's gone," Souji realized, bemused; the snow had thawed away in the warmth of his pale hand, leaving an inconspicuous bite of cold. "Kondou-san, have I broken it?"

⠀⠀⠀Devastate, annihilate, mutilate, kill... That was what he always did. Carnage was the only concept he could discern in a perpetual endeavor for survival, like the pitiless machine he was; a child long since devoid of purity.

⠀⠀⠀The imminent proximity between them did nothing to hinder the desultory distance. Instead, the captain felt as if he had encroached on a funeral procession. "No, Souji. It has merely melted into your body. Eventually, it will return to the earth from which it came."

⠀⠀⠀The boy's eyes wandered to the rows of lifeless, insensate lanthorns, unpropitiously solemn and grave despite the blithe of the city. The snow upon them had yet to dissolve at all. "Are there different types of snow? The ones that do melt... and those that do not?"

⠀⠀⠀"No, snow fluxes upon contact with warmth," the captain explained patiently. "It merely piles atop things that are cold."

⠀⠀⠀"So... I am warm? I thought snow would not melt on my hand," said Souji.

⠀⠀⠀"You are alive. Of course you are warm."

⠀⠀⠀"Is that so?" Souji's big emerald eyes fluttered in perplexed disconcertion. "But I am always told that I seem to be so very cold, not unlike the ice."

⠀⠀⠀"By whom?"

⠀⠀⠀"Well... many people apart from Kondou-san."

⠀⠀⠀Upon lack of an immediate response, the child peered into the captain's eyes, in them emulated his own fair features. "But they aren't very wrong. I am Kondou-san's weapon."

⠀⠀⠀An incommodious silence ensued for an enduring moment.

⠀⠀⠀"No, Souji," said Kondou finally, kneeling on the ground beside the boy. His green eyes were too innocent, too puerile. "Listen to me. You do not know anything except how to fight, it's true. However, please try to understand my values. If you do so, perhaps you will become less of the tool you are now viewed as. You are not a weapon in need of a master. You need not take orders from me or from anyone else in this world. Only then will you be free. Do you understand?" His smile was weary and drawn, as if the years of warfare had finally caught up to him, but as kind as ever nonetheless. The lethargy did not reach the warmth of his eyes. "Do not be my weapon. Be Souji."

⠀ 

⠀ 

* * *

⠀ 

⠀ 

⠀⠀⠀"Hey, you." The man nudged the small body with the apex of his shoe. "Get up." In the miasmic effluvia of the shrapnel that smothered the vapid atmosphere of the battlefield, Kondou could barely discern the varmint creature that stirred in the presence of the furor and rose precariously.

⠀⠀⠀"It" was a boy. An unsightly, ensanguined mess of an adolescent no more than ten years old. His clothes were revoltingly drab, salvaged from ragged oddments of threadbare cloth and soiled with dry, corrugated blood. But nevertheless, he was not merely a child in decrepit, unseeming clothing; he was beguilingly beautiful.

⠀⠀⠀Too beautiful, too transcendental, like an eidolic saint embalmed in parchment, anointed by artless, amaranthine pulchritude that would outvie the asperous austerity of time.

⠀⠀⠀His russet hair shrouded his cadaverous, porcelain features, as brittle and dainty as a marionette in contradistinction to his unfrastidious accoutrements. Too many scratches and grazes marred his face. His emerald irises were visible through the apertures of his disheveled coppery locks, ludicrously large and auroral. The sight evoked an indecipherable sense of melancholy within the convoluted depths of Kondou's mind. 

⠀⠀⠀The child crumpled on the imbrued ground, bare legs bleeding abundantly.

⠀⠀⠀"Do you intend to disobey me?" Kondou watched his superior seize the boy's head depravedly in a contemning demeanor that reeked of imperious oppression.

⠀⠀⠀In an amaurotic upheaval of anger, the captain pushed the man's arm away. The amiable facade that larvated them both in surreptitious fallacy dissolved to animosity at once. "Stop that! Don't be violent with a boy! He's hurt, can you not see? Please, Serizawa-san, find a medic for him immediately!"

⠀⠀⠀Serizawa merely guffawed with unscrupulous conviction, as if Kondou's patent mortification were a preposterous crusade for hallucinatory equity. Through his repugnance, his lips formed a contorted, grimalkin smile of delectation; a man consumed wholly by his own condescending antipathy.

⠀⠀⠀"Are you connoting that you wish to rebel as well, Kondou-kun? As I recall, you are merely a low-ranking officer, and by the communiqué of the military you are to adhere to me. Shall I report your insurgence to the officials?"

⠀⠀⠀"I apologize, Serizawa-san, for my impertinence. However, I cannot allow such detestable treatment of a child!"

⠀⠀⠀"A child?" Serizawa appeared palpably amused. "I should think not. You see, I have been using it as a weapon, and for three months he has been commendably effective." He pointed nonchalantly to a corpse that lay soundlessly beside them, tone lighthearted and indifferent. "That one there was a courtesy of it." A flicker of hysteric mania appeared in his eyes. "I found it abandoned on the western shoreline a while back. It doesn't talk and barely needs any sleep. Its wounds heal immediately after infliction."

⠀⠀⠀He inclined his head to a near contiguous distance with a revoltingly intimate smile. "And the best part of all... you tell him to kill, and he'll do it. All he wants are orders." 

⠀⠀⠀Hereupon his magniloquently legerdemain words, Kondou reached for the child and held him to his own chest. The boy trembled imperceptibly in his arms, irresolute and frail. He clung to the black uniform as if it were a vessel appointed to alleviate him from the heinous incarceration of Hell. 

⠀⠀⠀"This is inadmissible nonsense. I cannot allow you to hurt him this way."

⠀⠀⠀Serizawa's erroneous sneer became vacillate, devoting the strained rigidity between them to immedicable chagrin. He eyed the boy with supercilious condescension, as if the child were a blaspheme against humanity.

⠀⠀⠀"Then take it. I planned to dispose of it when the war ended, but it seems that such a task would be impossible with its ability." 

⠀⠀⠀The fear is his voice was irrefutable. Serizawa was unassailably afraid. 

⠀⠀⠀"Take it far away from me, Kondou-kun. Use it for all it's worth. When you're done, kill it." His leer was derisive, contumely, distorted with grievous hatred. "Make it a painful demise if you can. For all the callous things it has done, it deserves worse that death." 

⠀ 

⠀ 

* * *

⠀ 

⠀ 

⠀⠀⠀His fingers interlocked tightly around the lamp, the tangerine flame ailing in the cold as it shivered feebly; the meager warmth it enkindled vaporized to nothing in the umbrageous placidity of night. The decrementing moonbeams illuminated the impervious tenebrosity of the room, obscuring the child's features in spheroidal shadow. His large virescent eyes were vacantly phlegmatic, disconsolately insouciant and devoid of hope.

⠀⠀⠀"I believe you are not a weapon, and therefore I cannot just refer to you without a proper name," Kondou murmured astutely. "Do you not have one?"

⠀⠀⠀Silence. The boy recoiled querulously and cowered within the corner, the wary trepidation apparent in his luculent irises. The captain perceived the sense of vicarious affliction without the presence of voice.

⠀⠀⠀"If you cannot speak, I understand."

⠀⠀⠀"Souji." The child's voice was discordant, fractured and unused for so long. "Just Souji." 

⠀ 

⠀ 

* * *

⠀ 

⠀ 

⠀⠀⠀Explosions ignited in the distance, clouding the crepuscular air with smoke and the acrid scent of gunpowder. The irenic tranquility of night was appallingly unharmonized with the ghastly wails of fury and agony that followed. The dust that permeated across the battlefield committed the battlefield to turmoil, and the hazy milieu made impossible the attempt to ascertain friend from foe; smoke obscured the black sky, the phantasmagorical moonlight, the salient red flag of the alliance that billowed in the air.

⠀⠀⠀In the aftermath of the preceding bombardment, corpses now littered the ground, mutilated and unrecognizable, immersed in a sea of blood. Disoriented, he shook his head rapidly to obliterate the unsightly memory, ears ringing from the reverberation of the shots that sounded. 

⠀⠀⠀"Your orders, Captain."

⠀⠀⠀At the inquiry, Kondou hesitated. Any advance would prove futile in the present maelstrom of the cannonade. But to dismantle the artillery... He heard the roars of the adversary as they progressed, typhlotic and destitute for slaughter. Beside him, Souji awaited his assignment in silence, the ruinous carnage reflected in the speculum of his eyes. Such was a thing a child never should have witnessed.

⠀⠀⠀"Souji." His voice had gone desiccant; the order he was about to execute was implacably ghastly. "Souji... kill."

⠀⠀⠀The boy vanished into the opacity of the battlefield without a sound.

⠀⠀⠀Through the ashen fuliginosity, he watched as Souji careened through the transient veil of smoke and around the conglomerations of lamentable bodies strewn unceremoniously across the battlefield with the agility of a dormouse scuttling to the sheltered safety of its burrow. Nearby, the gleam of a lantern flickered meekly through the adumbral remnants of the detonation, and the child paused abruptly. A rifle would expel any hope for an abstruse infiltration. He found a dagger in his pocket instead. The flummoxed antagonist made a muffled cry of revulsion seconds before his demise, mouth agape to howl a premonition as he scrambled for his weapon. Souji slit his throat before he had the chance to do so. The man collapsed lifelessly to the ground like a marionette bereft of strings, exanimate eyes wide open.

⠀⠀⠀The lantern crashed to the ground with a strident clang, still interdigitated in the languid hand of the martyr; flames kindled from the remnants of shattered glass, devouring the body of the soldier. Fire ignited the desolate woodland with terrible speed, the fiery cackle immersing the recurrent wails that resonated with haunting finality. The last stalling armistice dissolved to nothing, consigning the world to inscrutable, atrocious discord. Rifles fired point-blank, projectiles rocketing with mindless inaccuracy into the fray. Through the chaotic reign of terror the blaze had aroused, Souji hacked at every nearest thing, leaving countless expurgated corpses in his soundless wake. Blood and flesh splattered, littering the ground with gore and dismembered limbs. The bodies were left irrevocably unrecognizable.

⠀⠀⠀Indistinguishable. Mutilated. Dead. 

⠀⠀⠀Shrouded in flame, the captain stared, anesthetized, rendered unable to issue any further command. Rationality battled instinct for domination of his mind, engendering a fervent turmoil of unrest. This was a malignant creature loved dearly by the specters of death. A dastardly, sanguinary assassin who had forsaken all righteous values; a demon beyond redemption, without conscience or remorse.

⠀⠀⠀He was barely cognizant of his own voice as his regiment advanced at his behest.

⠀⠀⠀For a fugacious, whimsical moment, time decelerated, and confounded amber irises met dispassionate, insipid emerald through the ferment pandemonium. In the haze of the upheaval, their gazes interlocked in a wordless exchange, Souji was no more than a pernicious, deranged monster with the competence of a thousand soldiers and the heart of a machine. The abhorrent display of fiendish slaughter sent an involuntary convulsion of egregious horror through the captain's body.

⠀⠀⠀But there was only a forlorn sense of acceptance in the child's eyes, a nostalgic peace that blossomed from the fruit of bloodshed. A nocent, arduous recognition that his fate was to perish amidst the ravaging detriments of humanity.

⠀⠀⠀And Kondou could only watch as the boy disappeared into the smoke, unable to evict himself of the caitiff charade. He caught one last glimpse of the familiar copper hued hair, turned silver in the chatoyant lambency of the conflagration... in time to see the tool he had salvaged evolve into a beast and the boy indefinitely gone.

⠀ 

⠀ 

* * *

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ғᴏᴜʀ ʏᴇᴀʀs ʟᴀᴛᴇʀ

 

⠀⠀⠀In the causatum of the Final Operation, the abeyant castle was left in deplorable ruin. The structure had capitulated to the explosion, the spires disintegrating to disheartened oblivion in place of their formerly exalted grandeur.

⠀⠀⠀Impatience hindered Souji's ability to fire properly. His heart pounded radically against his chest, so quickly it hurt. In a transient moment of vulnerability, a bullet grazed his shoulder and his vision blurred momentarily from the pain. It was a gaffe he never made; now, it was an occluding failure that would render him useless while it mattered.

⠀⠀⠀A plume of smoke rose from the highest steeple, reduced to dilapidated rubble. Soldiers throttled the halls, choking the passageways to the brim as they ascended the stairs from inferior floors of the citadel, clashing blindly in relentless conflict.

⠀⠀⠀Souji lost regimentation of his animalistic instinct. He ripped the legs off the nearest soldier and decapitated another, narrowly equivocating a bullet aimed at his head as he tore through the derelict minaret of the edifice. He shot all the soldiers on the superior floor in his sightline without cease or reproachful penitence, ever so perspicuously lethal. He was an automatic assassin deluged in blood, inundated in inhumanely iniquitous carnage.

⠀⠀⠀Pain exploded in his side and he made a muffled cry; his legs collapsed beneath him, spilling his body to the floor. Any attempt to stand proved futile; his diminutive strength had faded to nothing. This time, the infliction did not close. In a haze of agony, he gazed languidly through disheveled locks of copper at the penultimate pathway, psychedelic eyes desecrating the unfolding cataclysm in search of his superior officer.

⠀⠀⠀The captain was crumpled against a pillar, at the mercy of an ominous executioner. Debilitated with pain, Souji staggered upright despite the harrowing severity of his injury and fired blindly. The soldier's hands derailed around the rifle as he collapsed in a nightmarish pool of his own atramentous blood, but the damage was already done. The tip of the bayonet had perforated the captain's chest.

⠀⠀⠀"Kondou-san...."

⠀⠀⠀Souji stumbled towards his superior officer and collapsed weakly beside him, an imperceptible whimper of pain escaping his bloodied mouth. He could not breathe very well; his ribs were plausibly damaged from the bullet. The circumambient struggle had ebbed away, leaving grotesque aggregations of maimed corpses amassed on the floors of the alcazar. 

⠀⠀⠀Innumerous bullets had gouged themselves within the captain's body, and he bore wounds of profound severity. He was bleeding profusely; despite the faltering rise and fall of his chest, he was inexplicably near the abhorrent gates of Hell that inevitably awaited. Souji crawled closer to him, his sole obsession the only prospect precluding the last impalpable thread of consciousness from abandoning him.

⠀⠀⠀"Kondou-san, please hold on!" Lethargic with agony, he could scarcely cogitate the way out of the anfractuous architecture. His senses perceived the presence of an enemy nearby and he promptly snatched the rifle that lay quiescent beside him, aiming at the intrusive adversary. From an adjoining vestibule, a lone soldier ogled him with wide, disquieted irises, bleeding from several critical wounds. 

⠀⠀⠀The soft click resounded through the empty hallway with hollow resonance. Souji's eyes narrowed in fury. Empty.

⠀⠀⠀The soldier turned and gyrated into a new corridor fearfully.

⠀⠀⠀"Souji..." Kondou's eyes were barely open. "Souji, run away."

⠀⠀⠀The boy heaved his captain's body upright, using his own small frame as support. His frail, tenuous legs trembled under the arduous strain. "How am I supposed to run away... while Kondou-san is with me?"

⠀⠀⠀"Leave me here... and go."

⠀⠀⠀"No!" Souji clung tighter to him, obstinate resolve rekindled. "I will not let Kondou-san die!" He carried the captain's body laggardly across the empty hall, stagnant pace hindered by the insensate bodies disseminated across the ground.

⠀⠀⠀"Please..."

⠀⠀⠀The horrible cacophony of a dispatched cartridge shattered the vapid tranquility of the despoiled citadel, and Souji cried in pain. Crimson blood pooled from his body, painting his clothes black as it percolated to stone. The sword clattered to the floor with a languorous thud; the bullet had severed his limb from the forearm. Crippled with agony, Souji could barely discern through an immobilized haze the soldier he had let escape, perched in distant proximity. The man crumpled lifelessly, his final servitude to his incitement complete.

⠀⠀⠀"Souji!" His captain's voice sounded so very far away.

⠀⠀⠀Notwithstanding his inadequate condition, Souji's eyes coruscated with adamant recalcitrance in spite of the tremendous pain; with the only arm that remained, he clutched the captain's body with indefatigable obstinacy, pertinacious in spite of the adversely partisan odds against him. His legs quivered violently as he forced his body upright, whereupon he attempted once again to limp further. "I will not run away! If Kondou-san stays, I will remain and fight here! If I am to flee, I will take Kondou-san with me!" 

⠀⠀⠀"Souji, stop it..." Kondou winced at the sound of blood vessels rupturing amidst the discombobulated tumult. Souji no longer exuded the impassive beauty of a demonic creature with inhuman prominence in battle. His ashen countenance was that of a frightened child, maimed and diffident amidst the contemptible calamity of warfare.

⠀⠀⠀"I do not want to," Souji reciprocated softly, a thin stream of lurid cerise leaking from his mouth. His injured arm hung flaccidly at his side, execrably mangled and unrectifiable. Again and again, he fell and managed to stand back up, until the ground was immersed in a horrific sea of blood. 

⠀⠀⠀"Souji... this is enough. Your arm... your arm is..."

⠀⠀⠀"I'm fine." Another whimper of pain.

⠀⠀⠀"I order you to abandon me!"

⠀⠀⠀"Then I cannot obey this order! No matter what... I will not let Kondou-san die!"

⠀⠀⠀The captain drew a shuddering breath; he was rapidly losing susceptibility of his body as his life drained to depletion. "Souji, you must live. I cannot allow you to die before you have truly been alive."

⠀⠀⠀Souji's arm was bleeding fulsomely, the spilt cruor incongruously discernible against the pallid stonework of the fortress. "I do not understand," He whimpered, emerald eyes welling with tears. "I do not understand, Kondou-san! How do I live? I am alive now, am I not?"

⠀⠀⠀"To live... means to learn empathy. To feel emotion and have human flaws. To survive... without the orders you believe to be a necessity." The captain's voice dwindled to an imperceptible murmuration.

⠀⠀⠀Rivulets of limpid water leaked from the child's eyes, the incisive droplets glissading past sallow, bloodless features. Souji's disheveled, tearful face was a heteroclite facet Kondou had never before attested; he was a boy who had never cried before, despite the inconsolable grief his renounced solitude amidst the capricious camaraderie of society must have endowed him.

⠀⠀⠀"I want you to live, Souji.... Live, and be who you were meant to be."

⠀⠀⠀Souji was destitute for an order. Order me to stop crying. Tell me to save you. Anything. He was a tool, a weapon; he was demeritorious and reprehensible without commands.

⠀⠀⠀Inconsequential, unavailing, worthless.

⠀⠀⠀He could only murmur a name as vigilance abandoned him, consigning the world to irremediable caliginosity.

⠀⠀⠀The infamous rumors lived on, ignominious and foreboding in recurrent fabrication. But the records of an acrimonious, nameless boy soldier ended there.

 

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀つづく。。。


End file.
